Download or read book Johannes Brahms written by Jan Swafford and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an expansive study Johannes Brahms emerges from Jan Swafford's book is not a bearded eminence but rather an assemblage of contradictions. He grew up in grinding poverty and as a teenager was forced to play the piano in brothels. Recognized by his teachers as a stupendous talent, Robert Schumann proclaimed Brahms at only twenty-years-old to be the saviour of German music. Brahms spent the rest of his life living up to the that prophecy. He experienced triumphs few artists have enjoyed in their lifetime, yet lived with a relentless loneliness and a growing fatalism about the future of music and the world.
Download or read book The Life and Times of Johannes Brahms written by Jim Whiting and published by Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a family that lived in extreme poverty. Yet by the time of his death he had become one of the most financially successful classical music composers who ever lived. It wasn’t easy. His family had to move several times while Hannes (as he was nicknamed) was still a boy. He had to go to work when he was just 13, playing the piano in rough waterfront taverns in Hamburg. Often he wouldn’t come home until dawn. Brahms received his first big break when he was 20. The composer Robert Schumann called him a “genius” and a “young eagle.” Even then, it still took him many years to become famous. While he is most noted for his symphonies and concertos, it is likely that more people know him for his “Cradle Song,” better known as “Brahms’s Lullaby,” which millions of mothers have sung to their young children to lull them to sleep.
Download or read book Johannes Brahms written by Johannes Brahms and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive collection of the letters of Johannes Brahms ever to appear in English. Over 550 are included, virtually all uncut, and there are over a dozen published here for the first time in any language. Although he corresponded throughout his life with some of the great performers, composers, musicologists, writers, scientists, and artists of the day, and although thousands of his letters have survived, English readers have until now had scant opportunity to meet Brahms in person, through his words, and in his own voice. The letters in this volume range from 1848 to just before his death. They include most of Brahm's letters to Robert Schumann, over a hundred letters to Clara Schumann, and the complete Brahms-Wagner correspondence. They are joined by a running commentary to form an absorbing narrative, documented with scholarly care, provided with comprehensive notes, but written for the general music lover--the result is a lively biography. The work is generously illustrated, and contains several detailed appendices and an index.
Download or read book The Songs of Johannes Brahms written by Eric Sams and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Essential to the composer's method of song-writing was a harmony between musical form and poetic text. Sams takes us right to the heart of that creative method and helps to explain how and why a particular part of the text matches a particular piece of music. He includes a list of the motifs employed by Brahms to help show how the mind of the composer worked when seeking apposite music for the imagery of the poem."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Hungarian Dances Volume 2 written by Johannes Brahms and published by Alfred Music. This book was released on with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brahms brilliantly captured the spontaneity and passion of Hungarian gypsy music in his 21 Hungarian Dances. In this volume containing dances 11-21, editors Carol Ann Bell and Digby Bell have scrutinized all available autograph manuscripts of the duet, solo and orchestral versions and compared them with the earliest printed editions to produce the most scholarly, critical body of these works available today. Performance notes, helpful fingering suggestions, ornament realizations, and a wealth of historical background are provided.
Download or read book Clara Schumann written by Nancy Reich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing and award-winning biography tells the story of the tragedies and triumphs of Clara Wieck Schumann (1819–1896), a musician of remarkable achievements. At once artist, composer, editor, teacher, wife, and mother of eight children, she was an important force in the musical world of her time. To show how Schumann surmounted the obstacles facing female artists in the nineteenth century, Nancy B. Reich has drawn on previously unexplored primary sources: unpublished diaries, letters, and family papers, as well as concert programs. Going beyond the familiar legends of the Schumann literature, she applies the tools of musicological scholarship and the insights of psychology to provide a new, full-scale portrait.The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, Reich follows Clara Schumann's life from her early years as a child prodigy through her marriage to Robert Schumann and into the forty years after his death, when she established and maintained an extraordinary European career while supporting and supervising a household and seven children. Part Two covers four major themes in Schumann's life: her relationship with Johannes Brahms and other friends and contemporaries; her creative work; her life on the concert stage; and her success as a teacher.Throughout, excerpts from diaries and letters in Reich's own translations clear up misconceptions about her life and achievements and her partnership with Robert Schumann. Highlighting aspects of Clara Schumann's personality and character that have been neglected by earlier biographers, this candid and eminently readable account adds appreciably to our understanding of a fascinating artist and woman.For this revised edition, Reich has added several photographs and updated the text to include recent discoveries. She has also prepared a Catalogue of Works that includes all of Clara Schumann's known published and unpublished compositions and works she edited, as well as descriptions of the autographs, the first editions, the modern editions, and recent literature on each piece. The Catalogue also notes Schumann's performances of her own music and provides pertinent quotations from letters, diaries, and contemporary reviews.
Download or read book The Life of Johannes Brahms Volume 2 written by Florence May and published by Alpha Edition. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Life of Johannes Brahms Volume 2, has been acknowledged as a major work throughout human history, and we have taken precautions to assure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern manner for both present and future generations. This book has been completely retyped, revised, and reformatted. The text is readable and clear because these books are not created from scanned copies.
Download or read book Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia vol I written by Barbara Kendall-Davies and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The name of Pauline Viardot Garcia was well known during her lifetime, but after her death in 1910, she passed into obscurity. She was born in Paris in 1821, the youngest child of the Spanish tenor, Manuel Garcia; her sister was Maria Malibran, and her brother, Manuel Patrizio Garcia, was an eminent teacher of singing. The first volume of her biography ranges from 1836 until 1863 and covers the most important years of her operatic career. Several composers wrote for her, including Meyerbeer, for whom she created Fidès in Le Prophète; Saint Saëns modelled the role of Delilah on her and Brahms composed the Alto Rhapsody, which she premiered in 1870. She encouraged Gounod to write his first opera, Sapho, and sang the title role in the premiere at the Paris Opéra and at Covent Garden. Schumann dedicated his Liederkreis Op. 24 to Viardot, and Fauré dedicated several of his songs to her. She launched the career of Jules Massenet, and gave valuable assistance to Sullivan, Bizet, Stanford, Arthur Goring Thomas and several other musicians at the beginning of their careers. Although she was not good looking, she had a fascinating personality and great charm and several men fell in love with her, including Alfred de Musset, Gounod, Maurice Sand, Ary Scheffer, Berlioz, and Ivan Turgenev, who loved her devotedly for forty years, although she was married to Louis Viardot for the whole of that time. She was a linguist, artist, composer and talented pianist who studied with Franz Liszt, as well as being a superb singer and actress. Liszt admired her songs and said that she was the first woman composer of genius. Her talent for friendship was great, and she counted Chopin and George Sand as two of her most intimate friends. From 1863 until 1870, she lived in Baden-Baden where she became a celebrated musical hostess, as well as a fine teacher and composer. This revised edition, which has additional images and an accompanying CD of songs by Viardot sung by the author, traces the life and work of one of the most important singers of the nineteenth century, Pauline Viardot Garcia. Her influence on figures such as Meyerbeer, Turgenev, Berlioz, Gounod and Liszt, makes this volume, only the second to appear in English, indispensable to the musicologist with an interest in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book The Shorter Piano Pieces written by Johannes Brahms and published by Alfred Music. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the latter part of his life, Brahms wrote only sets of relatively short pieces. With their formal and stylistic perfection, they are among the most valuable of the late-Romantic additions to piano repertoire. Included in this edition are 30 pieces by Brahms, preceded by a helpful introduction which contains definitions of the ballade, rhapsody, capriccio and intermezzo.
Download or read book Trio written by Boman Desai and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The trio comprises three musical geniuses: Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Clara married Robert, with whom she fell in love when she was just sixteen, though it meant challenging the iron will of her father, who wished her to marry an earl or a count, certainly not an impoverished composer. The Schumanns had eight children, and Robert’s greatness as a composer was never in doubt, but he was also mentally ill, attempted suicide, and finally incarcerated himself in an asylum, where he died two and a half years later. Johannes Brahms entered the picture shortly before the incarceration and fell deeply in love with Clara but was just as deeply indebted to Robert for getting his first six opuses published within weeks of their meeting. Clara was forbidden to see Robert in the asylum because the doctors feared she would excite him too much. Brahms became a go-between for the couple, ferrying messages to and fro, but both loved Robert too well to abuse his trust. Brahms learned instead to associate deep love with deep renunciation—and, coupling this love with early experiences of playing dance music for sailors and prostitutes in Hamburg’s dockside bars, he became a victim to the Freudian conundrum: where he loves, he feels no passion, and where he feels passion, he cannot love. Germany grows in the hinterland of the story from four hundred-plus principalities to one nation under Bismarck. The great composers of the century (Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner among others) have their entrances and exits, and the ghosts of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert are never distant. Though firmly grounded in fact, the book unfolds like a novel, a narrative of love, insanity, suicide, revolution, politics, war, and of course, music.
Download or read book A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms written by Paul Stark and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-10-22 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The song translations by Stanley Appelbaum are excellent. Stark's commentaries are concise, intelligent, highly readable . . . Laymen and specialists alike will find [this book] a useful reference book to have on their shelves." —Fontes Artis Musicae "This book would be a warmly welcomed addition to the library of any lover of art song." —American Music Teacher "It is informative, insightful, illuminating, an invaluable resource for singers, teachers, coach-accompanists, highly recommended for anyone having anything to do with Brahms lieder." —Journal of Singing "Stark's understanding and affectionate discussion of the relationship between music and text draws the reader to examine more of Brahms's songs." —Choice Lucien Stark analyzes in detail more than 200 solo songs by Brahms and gives us translations of the texts. For performers, students, and teachers, this is a treasure-house of information and insight about a rich and varied repertoire.
Download or read book Brahms written by Malcolm MacDonald and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2001 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'There is no better book on Brahms in print, and all its succesors will be deeply in its debt ... inaugurates a new era in Brahms studies.' The Musical Times
Download or read book Performing Brahms written by Michael Musgrave and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-02 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great deal of evidence survives about how Brahms and his contemporaries performed his music. But much of this evidence - found in letters, autograph scores, treatises, publications, recordings, and more - has been hard to access, both for musicians and for scholars. This book brings the most important evidence together into one volume. It also includes discussions by leading Brahms scholars of the many issues raised by the evidence. The period spanned by the life of Brahms and the following generation saw a crucial transition in performance style. As a result, modern performance practices differ significantly from those of Brahms's time. By exploring the musical styles and habits of Brahms's era, this book will help musicians and scholars understand Brahms's music better and bring fresh ideas to present-day performance. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the accompanying CD of historic recordings - including a performance by Brahms himself.
Download or read book Johannes Brahms Free But Alone written by Constantin Floros and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johannes Brahms was until now widely regarded as the archetype of the «absolute musician». Based on new research, the study shows how close autobiographic and poetic elements are in fact linked to his oeuvre. Like Robert Schumann, Brahms subscribed to an aesthetic of «poetic» music. In many of his compositions he got his inspiration from personal experiences, poems or images, as is shown by hitherto unpublished documents, letters, and diary entries, as well as from close analyses of individual works. Brahms's personality, too, is seen in a new way. He adopted Joseph Joachim's motto «Frei, aber einsam», «Free but Alone». The tonal code F - A - E, the musical symbol of this, recurs frequently in his works. Not least, the English version of the book, originally published in German in 1997, includes four additional chapters that investigate novel aspects by dealing in detail with the First Symphony, the German Requiem, Nänie and the Four Serious Songs. The American Brahms Society stressed the importance of the study for all those who want to come to know the unknown Brahms.
Download or read book The Variations of Johannes Brahms written by Julian Littlewood and published by Plumbago Books and Arts. This book was released on 2004 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Variation is a fundamental musical principle, yet its most naked expression - variation form - resists all but the broadest of descriptions. This book offers listener, performer, analyst and composer an eclectic array of approaches to `Theme and Variations', including: patterns of departure and return; real versus perceived time; strategies of propulsion and closure in an intrinsically cyclic and open-ended form; the interplay of authorial voices deriving from dialogue between the `self' of variations and the `other' of their theme; critique of a theme through a set's generic references; drama and narrative achieved through textural and tonal control; and the intrinsic sound of a variation, so different from that of a freely composed work. These topics are introduced through a general survey of the form, seen through the prisms of the provenance of themes and the ideologies of sets, before being developed through close study of Brahms's variation sets and movements. Brahms was supremely aware of his place in music history and was uncommonly self-conscious in his manipulation of different techniques of composition. His variation sets - some of the most well-crafted and beloved examples - place the interplay of forms and styles at the heart of their identity. Moreover, in their stunning breadth and diversity they offer a microcosm of Brahms's entire output, a succinct revelation of his life-long concerns. Through them we marvel at his technical and poetic mastery, and journey to the heart of his creative character.
Download or read book Brahms 2 written by Michael Musgrave and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987-04-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half of these twelve original essays by international authorities are critical analyses of Brahm's music, while the remainder discuss influences, the reception of his music and his place in history.
Download or read book Dvor k and His World written by Michael Beckerman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antonin Dvorák made his famous trip to the United States one hundred years ago, but despite an enormous amount of attention from scholars and critics since that time, he remains an elusive figure. Comprising both interpretive essays and a selection of fascinating documents that bear on Dvorák's career and music, this volume addresses fundamental questions about the composer while presenting an argument for a radical reappraisal. The essays, which make up the first part of the book, begin with Leon Botstein's inquiry into the reception of Dvorák's work in German-speaking Europe, in England, and in America. Commenting on the relationship between Dvorák and Brahms, David Beveridge offers the first detailed portrait of perhaps the most interesting artistic friendship of the era. Joseph Horowitz explores the context in which the "New World" Symphony was premiered a century ago, offering an absorbing account of New York musical life at that time. In discussing Dvorák as a composer of operas, Jan Smaczny provides an unexpected slant on the widely held view of him as a "nationalist" composer. Michael Beckerman further investigates this view of Dvorák by raising the question of the role nationalism played in music of the nineteenth century. The second part of this volume presents Dvorák's correspondence and reminiscences as well as unpublished reviews and criticism from the Czech press. It includes a series of documents from the composer's American years, a translation of the review of Rusalka's premiere with the photographs that accompanied the article, and Janácek's analyses of the symphonic poems. Many of these documents are published in English for the first time.
